Sunday, 31 January 2010

We are moving into our third month of crazy winter weather with lots of snow and today we finally did something more than just shovel it around and off the driveway. We went with my husband's brother and his family to a hill not far from our house and played in the snow, sliding down the hill, and then ended the outing with hot dogs and hot cocoa. I shot this of my nephew right there in the snow.

#4, 2010

I am almost caught up with everything I set out to do a week ago. I still have the wordart for the P365 templates to put up. It will come soon, I promise.

I got a question about a different version of the wordart in the Valentine's card and I will try to get that done in the coming week as well.

Oh, and I have also had a few questions about the scripty font of my recent wordarts. It's a font called Satisfaction. I purchaced it from My Fonts. Just beware of that website though, you will want to spend way more money than can be considered reasonable. LOL!

disclaimer: this tutorial works for frames that have holes in the back for the nail, if your frames are strung you will need to find another way to group them and hang them straight

So I said a while ago that I would come back and post my way of getting the grouping of the frames on my photo wall the way I wanted it. Here it is. I don't claim to have found the fastest way in the world and I am sure there are lots of great ways out there to hang picture frames in straight lines. I just want to share how I did it.

1. Get a roll of cheap-o wrapping paper that you don't want to use for beautiful gifts. I am a hoarder when it comes to wrapping paper and had lots to choose from.

2. Roll the paper out on the floor so that it's long enough to cover the wall you want to hang your pictures on and cut it off. If your wall is wider than the paper roll out new lengths and tape together lenghtwise until you have a piece that is wide enough. For me it was enough with two lenghts. You don't have to bother measuring or making sure that the lenghts are taped together straight. You just have to make sure the whole piece is as wide or wider than your wall.

3. Now place your wrapping paper on the floor with the back side facing up.

4. Use a ruler to draw a line across the top of the paper. This will act as a guiding line for your frames, and later also to make sure that you get them straight on the wall. Then take out your frames and start placing them on the wrapping paper, trying out different combinations to find a look that appeals to you. At this stage you don't have to measure for alignment and exact distances. Your main objective right now is to find a grouping that you like. As I used identical frames all I had to do was to decide how many I wanted on each row and how to arrange it so that there was a balance between portrait and landscape photos. Take your time and step back from the floor from time to time so that you can see the whole thing from a distance.

5. When you are happy with the grouping of your frames it's time to whip out the ruler and pencil again. If you are like me - anal - it's important that the distance between each frame is the same. Here's where the ruler comes in handy. If you have problems keeping numbers in your head like I do sometimes write down the measurements that you decide on, both between frames on one row and between two rows. If you have decided to go with a less strict pattern for your grouping you might not feel as compelled to measure and align. That is fine too. It means one less thing to worry about.

6. Once you have your first frame measured and aligned with the top line you drew earlier then trace along the sides of the frame. Repeat with the rest of the frames. If you are going with a free form grouping then trace along the frames after placing them where you want them. This step is important. Do not skip this step!

7. When you have traced all the frames it's time to remove them from the wrapping paper. Pick up one frame and have a look at the back. Measure the distance from the edges to the hole where your nail will go once you hang it. If you are like me you will want to write these down too. If you are using different frames you need to repeat this step for each different frame. Now on each of the the traced frame lines on the wrapping paper use your measurements to mark the center of the hole. This step is also important. Do not skip this step either!

8. OK, by this time you should have lots of traced lines on your wrapping paper with marks for the holes inside each traced line. If you do, you are good to go. If you don't, please go back and review.

9. Now it's time to get the wrapping paper up on the wall. If the wall is very wide you will probably need help from a second set of hands. Either that or you are a stubborn type-A personality who are adamant on doing everythin yourself, and perfectly too. That was me. Tape the wrapping paper to the wall, making sure that the top line is completely level. You can either use a level or use your ruler to measure from the top of the wall (assuming your ceiling isn't round).

10. When the paper is up on the wall step back and look for a while at the lines. This will be how your wall will look. If you aren't happy with the look, take the paper down and start from the beginning. If you like it go get your hammer and nails.

11. Put a nail right where each mark for the holes are. Make sure the nail goes in at the center of the mark. Once you have all the nails in the wall you are ready to take the wrapping paper down. If the paper is thick and sturdy you need to be gentle so that you don't rip the nails off as well. If you used really thin and cheap paper from IKEA, again like me, you can just rip. You will now have perfectly placed nails with no marks on the wall to clean up or paint over.

Saturday, 30 January 2010

Here's the deal: I'm not a girlie girl. I don't do frills and bows. I don't do cutesy stuff. It's just not me. I'm drawn to sleek, classic design and in my own design work the biggest challenge is to find the balance between simple and bare.

But that doesn't mean I can't be romantic and sweet, does it? I can still tell my people I love them, right? Heck yeah!

So I created this card for Valentine's. It's straight to the point. No hearts, no lace, no frills. But I still think it gets the point across. :)
(Yeah, that's right, he's my people, lol!)

And just because all you lovely darlings have been so good to me, giving me love and posting sweet messages, I want to say thank you by offering it as a freebie!

Click here for your download link.
As always, I ask you to read and follow the TOU! Thank you ever so much!

Monday, 25 January 2010

I had this idea for a chocolate bar cover that I wanted to try out the other day so I sat down to play. The original idea turned out to not be so good but I ended up with something entirely different that I think would be a lovely little Valentine's gift for someone in your life with a sweet tooth, or as part of a favor goodie bag in a party.

(Credits:
Photo and paper by me, brush by Anna Aspnes, fonts are Georgia and Marcelle Script)

It's a cool treat to see a child discover their own face on a chocolate bar. It's like they're king of the world, lol!

Sunday, 24 January 2010

My husband has taken up playing the guitar in the last month. He practices every chance he gets and is making great strides. Of course, he started at zero so there is a long ways to go yet, but I am very proud of him for the determination he has. I wanted to mark this time of our lives, with our house being filled with music every day, with a photo for P52.

A little while ago I decided to spruce up one of the office walls a little with some home made art. The colours in that room are grey, silver, and red and I have somewhat of a theme going with circles (and dots) and letters (with an emphazis on R). So I made two pieces in red and framed them in silver frames. I haven't gotten round to hanging them yet - seriously need to get the drill out this week - but today I propped them up on a picture shelf to at least take some photos of them.

The first one I made all by my self by putting together red dots in different sizes into the letter R. I am so in love with how this came out. The funny thing is that the other day I saw a snippet of a rerun of an Oprah episode and there was a logo of her O that consisted of dots in different colours. I swear I made mine before I saw that though! ;)

The second piece I made is of the Swedish alphabet in different fonts, with a few numbers and a snowflake at the end, just for good measure. I am thinking about redoing this. I am not 100% in love with it. But yeah, it will do for now.

I have a bunch of things to catch up on; I know I promised the wordart last week, two P52 photos, and also some ideas for Valentine's that I wanted to share with you, as well as a mini tutorial for my way of doing a photo wall, but I am putting in a lot of overtime at work at the moment, so please have some patience with me. :D

Monday, 18 January 2010

I think I need a new blog banner. I never even bothered to make it bigger when I changed the blog format some months back. I know. Pathetic. I seriously need to get on that. Maybe I should spruce up the rest while I'm at it?

Sometimes even I have a stroke of genius. Like when I decide to look through my IKEA catalogues and be inspired. I did that four or five years ago and was really inspired to start a photo wall. We lived at a different place back then but we decided to bring the idea with us to this house when we moved just little over three years ago.

Being the lover of "simple" that I am, and let's face, plain anal about order and "clean", used 19 identical frames, all B/W photos, and arranged them in a grouping that I personally thought was appealing. But, that was three+ years ago, and to be honest both my photography and my editing skills have improved vastly since then. It was time for an update.

We discussed me doing something artsy and creative but in the end we (or I rather) came back to the simple, clean style that I want to define our house. So I simply printed some new photos and changed out the old ones.

What I want to convey with this post is that you don't need to do elaborate stuff to get a good end result. You don't need to do LOs, or books, or hybrid projects with all your photos. You don't need a lot of fuss. Sometimes just printing the photos and putting them in frames can be more than enough and very effective.

I love walking past this wall - it's on the way from the living room to our bedroom so I pass it at least twice a day - and see people we love, or a place we've been to, or a detail of something beautiful in our lives. I love to have guests go over and stand there for a while, striking up conversations whether they were there when the photos were taken or not. I love that they are a part of our daily lives and not stuck in in a box or in a book case.

Now you might not like the straight rows that I have. You might not like the uniform frames. You might not want all of your photos in B/W. Well that is the beauty of it, you can do it any which way you like! If you want inspiration, you can check out Decor8 Flickr group. There are plenty of photo wall pictures. Through this group I found Chez Larsson and fell in love instantly. Wow, what a beautiful home. What beautiful ideas.

Oh, and if you need tips on how to get perfectly straight rows like mine for a photo wall just give me a shout. I thought and thought about this for the longest time and came up with a way that works really well if you have enough photos to finish up the photo wall all at once.

Sunday, 17 January 2010

I spent both Saturday and Sunday morning painting this huge mutha of a painting. It all started with my coworker seeing a picture of a painting in our livingroom that my husband painted and asking if my husband would be up for making something similar for his new place. It continued with a misunderstanding between me and the hubby (where I thought he said yes and he thought he said no) and ended with me taking on the challenge this weekend.

Whew, and what a challenge it was. The canvas was 1x1,5 meter. OK, so I don't excercise all that much so I am ashamed to admit that I'm not as limber as I was a few years back. But painting that canvas was a right pain! It would have been an epic photo op though - thank god I was home alone!

Anyway, here is the finished product. I am not a painter. So not a painter. But we will see what my coworker thinks of it. If he doesn't like it I will definitely force the husband to redo it. (Please excuse the blurry photo)

I finally ordered the P53 book last night from Shutterfly. *gulp* Despite having a 20% off coupon it all still ended up being ... um ... not inexpensive. I know I will love the book and cherish it forever, and I know I am getting a 12x12 book with 53 pages so I get that it will cost , but it still hurt when I clicked on the final order button. LOL!

So we've arrived at the fourth and final set of freebie templates for P365 that I have created. With this there are twelve matching, but different, templates to keep you covered for the whole year. Of course, even if you aren't doing P365 you can certainly use these templates for other things as well.

Included is also the wordart for April. I decided I will put up the wordart for the rest of the year in a seperate post so if you want that you will just have to wait!

You can download the set here.
As always, please read and follow the TOU! Thank you very much!

Have a lovely Sunday everyone, I plan to spend it doing some creative work for a certain upcoming romantic holiday! ;)

Saturday, 16 January 2010

I actually scrapped some in the last couple of weeks. Imagine that! ;)

The first one is a sort of scrap page that I do a lot. I get inspired by a photo of mine, or a colour, or a particular paper and then I work from that. So the end result is more about the emotion than the story.

The other one actually started with me wanting to record a special occasion and to tell a story. I don't do these type of pages as often. I don't dislike them but I scrap more for the artistic expression. So this page is about one of my tattoos that I had done in 2008 and the story behind getting it.

Tuesday, 12 January 2010

As it happens this post means I surpass 300 posts on this blog. Neat-o!

OK, so now on to the business at hand. I believe we are up to the third set of templates in our P365 series. This set coordinates with the two previous ones with the rounded corner squares and the journaling strips. I hope you will like them.

You can reach the download link here.Please, as always, read and follow the TOU! Thanks so much!

The fourth and last set will be up and posted in a couple of days. I am currently working on finishing the wordart for the rest of the year. The thing that got me was to work out which months have five weeks. Uh, shouldn't be a difficult thing, right? But apparently there are serveral different ways of counting floating around the world. I will possibly solve this problem by making a fifth wordart for all months. LOL, yeah, making it easy on myself. But anyway, if you are interested in the last set check back soon. Ta!

Sunday, 10 January 2010

I will admit it, by the end of last year I was pretty fed up with P52. I felt my photos were boring and mediocre, and I didn't see how it all would come together. Then I uploaded them all to Shutterfly and saw the book slideshow. And I changed my mind. the photos might not all be big masterpieces but they represent me and my husband and our life together during the course of a year. Surprisingly many photos had a special occasion attached to them, something to be remembered.

So with that in mind I have decided to do it all over again this year. I will stick to just taking photos and then assembling them into a photo book. I will not commit to scrapping 52 layouts "just because". If I ever feel like scrapping some of them I will, but then because I want to. Not because I have to. And besides, I like the format from last year with the simple white frame on a black page. I think it looked both bold and classy at the same time.

And so, since it is the end of week #1 of 2010, here is my first photo of this year's P52.

#1, 2010
Winter has a firm grip on this part of the world with snow and temperatures in the negatives. My poor lavendar bushes are covered with snow and ice. It looks great but I just hope they will survive.

Wednesday, 6 January 2010

Just because I love ya so much I am putting up not one, not two, not three, but four sets of P365 templates. If you download all of them you will end up with 12 beautiful templates that will make scrapping your P365 much easier. As a bonus I am also including wordart for each week of every month of the year.

Saturday, 2 January 2010

I have a few things to share in this post. I like doing creative work around Christmas simply because there are so many pretty things around.

This Christmas wrap up layout came easily by using Liv's awesome template.Snapshots of Christmas
(Click here for credits)

I don't think I have scrapped fireworks before so even though the photo isn't perfect it was still something I wanted to do today.Going out with a bang
(Click here for credits)

My last thing is a hybrid project. We celebrated New Years Eve with my sister and her fiance and instead of a flower we bought Robbie Williams' latest album for them. I didn't want to wrap the CD up in wrapping paper - thought it was a little boring and it would totally give everything away, so I decided to make something. It ended up being something resembling a small book cover. Instead of book pages I attached the album inside and wrote a note to the hosts.

For the design of the front I used a template by Jessica Sprague for a book called A Year in our Ordinary Life. I changed the fonts and the words to fit my purpose.

Friday, 1 January 2010

last night was officially the last day of my first ever Project 52 and how appropriate that it was also the day of my last photo for said project.

Instead of fireworks my husband got a set of Khom Loy lanterns which we released right around the strike of twelve. It was freezing cold last night but completely clear skies so we could follow them going higher and higher in the sky for the longest time. It was so beautiful and something we will definitely do again.

#53, 2009

After this we toasted the new year with champagne and I tried my best to hold still (not easy when you're in a short skirt and stillettos and it's freezing cold) so that I could get some decent shots of all the fireworks going off around us. I had contemplated bringing the tripod but decided it was too much hassle at midnight after a couple of drinks. So the outcome wasn't perfect but will have to do.

I hope you all had a wonderful night and I am wishing you all a very happy new year!